Gadgets

Lenovo's new X1 Carbon is made of carbon-fiber construction as implied by its name and is very thin and light at 0.70" and just under three pounds. Lenovo claims that the X1 Carbon can last up to 10.9 hours with its lone battery, and continues with all of the features collected over the years with the various ThinkPad laptops/ultrabooks. This third-generation X1 Carbon also has much anticipated improvements to the keyboard and touchpad/trackpoint.

On Kickstarter, Zyro is pitching a “DroneBall” quadcopter that runs Linux on Gumstix COMs and acts like a smart aerial ball for multi-player games.

The Zyro DroneBall doesn’t look like a ball — nor does it act like any ball you’ve ever seen that isn’t made of Flubber. The quadcopter can hover, zig, and zag within a virtual aerial arena, mimicking a hockey puck, soccer ball, or an Ultimate Frisbee disc, says Zyro. It can even take the role of an extra player on the field interacting with another DroneBall.

Amazing, simply amazing! We have no idea how many Ubuntu phone units were sold today, but after only three hours all available BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition smartphones were sold out. Looks like the Ubuntu community in Europe is really strong, as they also had to face some server issues with BQ’s online store, which apparently was not prepared for a large crowd.

Sony's been trying the smartwatch thing for years, but the original SmartWatch and the SmartWatch 2 both... what's the word I'm looking for here? Sucked? Yeah. But the SmartWatch 3 has solid performance and two nifty features you won't find on any other Android Wear. It's the first with built-in GPS and a screen you can read without backlighting.

Android Wear watches are off to a pretty decent start. The Moto 360, the LG G Watch R, and the Asus ZenWatch are all lovely and useful in their own ways. So why might you buy a Sony smartwatch instead?

There’s been a lot of interesting Linux news of late. Not just GNU/Linux, but all types of Linux, Android, Chrome OS, Firefox OS, embedded (IoT), cloud computing, cars, TVs, just about anything you can think of. But truth be told, I’d like to see more Linux on the desktop — just as Linus Torvalds said he would like to see that.

The recent purchase of a Chromebook for my son got me thinking about a new opportunity for Linux on the desktop. This is not an idea for getting a standard GNU/Linux desktop to automagically replace all existing Windows desktops, but to leverage the cloud computing paradigm with a bulked­-up Chromebook-­like system that would be workable for 80 to 90 percent of personal, school, and business needs.

But companies are indeed bothering to make new designs and try different approaches to the tried and true tablet formula. The latest of which is Dell, which recently launched the clumsily named Venue 8 7000 Series (I’m just going to call it the Venue 8). The $399 Venue 8 is part of a design renaissance at Dell (along with the new XPS 13 laptop), showcasing premium materials and killer displays. It also acts as a vehicle for some never-before-seen mobile technologies from Intel. There are really two things that matter with the Venue 8, and they're why anyone is spending time talking about it: its design and its camera array.

The two biggest issues regarding Android's security are the size of the Android market and fragmentation of the Android ecosystem. Those issues impact all mobile platforms, not just Android, according to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "The former point is an issue since, as Microsoft learned to its sorrow with Windows," King remarked.

Google's Android Wear software just got smart - very smart - simply because it integrates Google Now top to bottom. With an update to Google Now comes an update to Android Wear, and what we're seeing today is an explosive update that'll make the suggestions for directions and sports scores you've been getting so far seem like drops in a barrel of friendly, and I daresay helpful, updates from apps of all kinds. Everything from eBay auction updates to the ability to "Download Venice" - all on your wrist, very soon.

The table is made of aircraft-grade aluminum and the table top is only 2.4-inches / 60mm in thickness. On the Windows side, the panel can detect up to 60 distinct touch points, while on the Android one there are only 12.

As we told you above, the table can essentially offer the perks of both Android and Windows in the same machine. The Android system is supported by a quad-core Rockchip RK3288 clocked at 2.0GHz fitted with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internals storage. The type of Android you’ll see here is version 4.4 KitKat.

Sony is both early to the smartwatch game, and late at the same time. The SmartWatch 3 puts aside some of the lessons of Sony’s previous wearables, but manages to learn some valuable lessons from the competition.